Managing / Backing Up a Large Music Library

HI,
I am trying to figure out the best way to manage my fathers iTunes library. It is Music Only (at this time) and consists of 140,000 tracks, 9,500 albums and takes up 3.2 TB. All the music is in uncompressed format. He is still adding music to the collection. It is currently on a Windows XP machine. - Well at least the programs are. I have placed the iTunes library on a NAS with sufficient storage to hold his full music collection if he continues to add it all.
What I am now struggling with is backing it up. Currently I have a 4TB USB drive that plugs into his NAS (XP won't recognise 4TB drive any other way) and he uses SyncToy to backup the Music directory every now and then. Problem is he is approaching the disk being full.
What I was thinking of doing was moving the Music from the iTunes Library directory to another directory, turning off the copy option in iTunes import his music and then turn the copy option back on. In this way he would have approximately 4TB of referenced files and all the new files in the iTunes Library folder. He could then plug in the 4th drive to back up the referenced part of his collection and plug in another drive to backup the unreferenced iTunes library.
So a couple of questions.
With a referenced library like this if you rename something (like artist/album/song) does iTunes change the file/directory names in the referenced area or is the information simply changed in the iTunes database?
Any other possible solutions that might be useful?
Thanks in advance.
Laurie

Generally moving anything manually tends to break things. See Make a split library portable for details.
If iTunes is keeping the media folder organized, and the media is stored inside the media folder, then files will be moved to reflect changes in the tags.
tt2

Similar Messages

I no longer have the PC that had my CD library and purchased music on iTunes. I am now on another PC and managed to download my purchased iTunes music etc. Is there a way on iTunes that I can get back my old CD music library without ripping again ?

I no longer have the PC that had my CD library and purchased music on iTunes. I am now on another PC and managed to download my purchased iTunes music etc. Is there a way on iTunes that I can get back my old CD music library without ripping again ? Earlier back up is corrupted. Thank you in advance. No longer have my old iPod but getting new one.

If you had the hard drive from the original machine, a backup of the same, an iPod with the media, or a subscription to iTunes Match then there would have been hope, but alas no.
For the future see Backup your iTunes for Windows library with SyncToy.
tt2

RE: freezing and resetting problems when syncing a large music library

Hi there,
I got a new ipod classic 160gb for christmas. I updated the firmware to 1.0.3 and synced it for the first time. When I tried to play any music it locked up and went into a loop of resetting itself which I could only break by forcing the ipod into disk mode.
I restored the ipod and tried again syncing the music in chunks. This worked until the ipod was about 50% full then it started to freeze and reset again. I took this ipod back to the store but the new one had the exact same problem!
Through a lot of trial and error I have managed to get the ipod working with only part of my library synced. By syncing music a few albums at a time I have managed to get about 86gb (of 120gb) onto it, but surely this is not how it is supposed to be! I have a dual boot system and have the same problems using windows XP or vista.
I know that I'm not the only person experiencing resetting problems with the ipod classic. Are the users who are experiencing these endless resetting problems with the ipod classic those who have large music libraries (i.e over 80gb)? Can the ipod classic simply not handle the large volumes of music it was designed to hold?
The only features I was looking forward to in the new ipod were a) larger capacity hard drive and b) the ability to organise playlists into folders on the ipod for easier browsing. As it stands I cannot sync my full library and navigating through my playlists is so slow it is hardly worth bothering. I never had a minutes trouble with my 5th gen.
Have I been unlucky and the ipod classics I have recieved have been duds? In which case should I arrange another replacement? Or is this typical of the ipod classic user experience when the user has a large music library and many playlists? Should I await a firmware update that might remedy my problems?
Lastly am I doing something wrong? Any help or workarounds would be gratefully appreciated.

best thing to do is use Playlist and Smart Playliss to fill your iPod. Just so you know, since your post seemed to indicate you thought the playlists have to be tailored to what is already on the iPod, when you sync to playlists, any songs needed for those playlists are automatically moved onto the iPod. And any songs NOT in the playlists get removed.
Patrick

I have a large music library 500 GB from an old computer on an external drive and I just got an I ac desk top 21.5 inch intel computer how do I put my music library on new computers iTunes e

I have a very large music library 500 GB on an external drive how do I get it on my brand new iMac intel

This article should help. You didn't mention what format the files are in and what format the external hard drive is, however this article povides the basics. You're probably most interested in the last section titled 'Adding content on your computer to iTunes'.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1473

I used to have a large music library on I Tunes but I somehow overwrote it with the few purchased items that were on my I-pod so I have lost everything apart from these few. Can I retrieve a previous library even if I've somehow lost it?

I used to have a large music library on I Tunes but I somehow overwrote it with the few purchased items that were on my I-pod so I have lost everything apart from these few. Can I retrieve a previous library even if I've somehow lost it? Any ideas? I've tried the Apple Support but they just showed me how to retrieve previous purchases and don't seem to have any solutions to my problem.

See Empty/corrupt iTunes library after upgrade/crash.
tt2

Music player capable of a large music library

I've been using arch for about a year now, and really like it! But I still miss one thing, a good Gnome music library/player.
I have a rather large (+-50K songs) which I used to mange and play with foobar on windows. Foobar was perfect, good library, fast, extremely configurable, and very conservative on memory. Especially the memory, what is foobar doing right that all these linux players are doing wrong??
The only thing kind of working for me is mpd+gmpc. This works ok, updates the library fast, but this is a very limited program when it comes to:
- frontend options
- dragging multiple files in playlist
- tag support (genre//musicbrainz id's/sort name)
- etc
I've tried:
- Amarok, which didn't even load my library when I told it to, and uses a bunch of kde libs
- Exaile, takes up 400 mb of memory, starts/responds very slow
- Quod Libet, promising, but also very slow
- Listen, Banshee and others are too buggy and slow
- Foobar on wine, gives a lot of interface errors due to the windows api in wine not being complete
So are there any options I'm currently missing?

fwojciec wrote:
kelnoky wrote:To be honest, there is nothing that can hold a candle to foobar. Nothing. It's the one program that has no equal counterpart on linux. Give up. I was searching for an alternative a very long time after I switched to linux and just didn't find anything. Mpd and Sonata comes close, but yeah...
I used to think the same way... but I got over foobar completely and I don't miss it anymore. The key was to stop looking for a foobar replacement and to rethink how I manage my music library so that it matches the linux way of doing things instead (one app per function). I prefer my current solution -- the main advantage is that I'm completely independent from any particular piece of software -- I could migrate my library to another player in a matter of minutes, for example, which is great.
Same with me. I use mpd with ncmpc along with some small scripts to automate things and other tools if I want to do something besides simply play music- Foobar2k is great and I used it years ago on Windows, but I now prefer having different tools for different jobs. Foobar2k is a rarity in software due to the fact it does everything and does most things a lot better than other function-specific tools. I do not foresee anyone cloning foobar2k in any OS and being successful. 9 times out of 10 such software is a bloated piece of crap, foobar2k just got lucky I agree, you have to rethink how you deal with your music collection if you aren't using foobar2k. I currently have 66,000 songs in mpd and I would never go back to a "regular" client for playing music, not even if foobar2k ran natively under Linux. I am gay for the server/client model now

How do I backup a very large music library?

I have about 3TB of music files on 2 external hard drives. A lot of this music is live recordings (obtained legally) which are not available commercially. I feel like I am at risk with no backup solution, but I have not been able to find a suitable solution. Any help here would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

This method deleted the huge "Other" file, but of course results in a long term issue of re-loading the ipod w/a large original file. On a external drive, I have my itunes music folder and other music in MP3/CD formats. I've tried to load these songs to the ipod, but it seems to want to place them in the "Other" file and not music. I have been manually loading these songs from the external drive and sliding them right into the music library on the itunes page. Is this the right to do this?

Large Music Library & Lots of Photos

Hi,
I haven't been able to find any answer to this question so here goes...
I have about 21k songs (~125gb) of music and about 35gb of photos.
Ideally, I'd like to be able to access all of my music via Atv, and in a perfect world a bunch of photos. So my plan is to...
Music
1. Turn off music synching
2. Stream my music library (which I do by adding it as a source?)
Photos
1. Go in and select a bunch of folders that I want to synch.
This is problematic because I don't use iPhoto and I want to arbitrarily select folders from my photo hard drive which are in different folders broken up by year. For example '2006/baby mariza' versus '2007/marizas 1st bday'. So if I select 2006 I can select folder from that year but I can't select any folder from the 2007 folder.
Suggestions?
g5

Because of having such a large library of music and also photos similar to yours, I stream the music and sync the photos.
I now use iphoto for the order of folders, but at first I took the photos from the hard-drive, which I can understand your predicament.
One suggestion that I did, was to put all your folders into one folder making them sub folders and then in the device list of apple TV on the photo tab choose the folder on your hard-drive and it will list all the sub folders inside, drag them in order and you should be good to go after clicking apply.
G5 1.8 Ghz & G4 laptop 12 inch. Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Large music library - difficulty restarting Q10

Hi
I have an iTunes library of music of approximately 21G. I synched to music to my BBQ10 using a sandisk 32G micro hsdc card. All works fine. However, when I change the battery or need to restart the Q10, normal start up takes place, I put in my SIM PIN code however, I am unable to access the phone for about 15 minutes. When I swipe up, the screen is simply blank. I then did think about the card and that it may be necessary to annex the music library. And when the card is removed or a card with only documents is inserted, the phone starts up and I can access this immediately.
Due to this issue, I've started using my iPod Classic again which is not optimal. Is there a way for my Q10 to start up immediately and for me to have my whole music library?
Thanks for your help!
Christopher - Q10 & Bold 9930

Hello christopherk67,
Welcome to the forums.
I have just done some testing with a 32 GB media card and it has 14 GB of media on it. When doing a boot I only see a different of less than 30 seconds from when the media card was in and out during the boot. At this point I would suggest you backup the media card and format the card. Once this is done put back the media and test again.
Let us know if you are having the same result after doing the steps.
-SR
Come follow your BlackBerry Technical Team on twitter! @BlackBerryHelp
Be sure to click Kudos! for those who have helped you.Click Solution? for posts that have solved your issue(s)!

How can I back up my itunes music library to cd disk's

I have already backed up my itunes music files on cd disks last year, but it's not up to date.I forgot the procedure to continue backing up music as I add it to my itunes library.Can someone help???

The built-in feature to backup to CD/DVD was removed from iTunes 10.4. Use the tools provided with your CD/DVD burner, or see this User Tip for a comprehensive iTunes backup strategy.
tt2

External Harddrive + Large Music Library + I Tunes = Major Pain

Why oh why? I am a pretty smart fellow. My family has 3 iphones that I can keep going pretty well. I have never figured out iTunes though. I keep a library of 17,000 songs on an external drive. I have configured iTunes every which way and according to every variable imaginable in regards to where it looks for songs and how it stores new songs. No matter what it duplicates my library. I just re-imaged my pc, installed a new copy of iTunes and it duplicated the songs again. Then I found where it ignored my telling it to use the external and it started storing new songs on C: drive again. ***. I don't want to go pay for another app to clean up duplicates that iTunes creates. And I don't want to go through and select the right version of 17,000 duplicated songs. Please, please Apple, can't you build this thing so it will simply read a music library without causing me to pull my hair out?

Go into itunes preferences and click on the advanced tab. There you should un-check 'copy files to itunes library'. If you dont then it will always duplicate your library taking up extra space on your HDD.
Also under the same advanced tab change the location of your itunes library to point to your external HD. This is done at the top of that window where it states itines music folder location.

How do I backup a large music library to two smaller drives?

Does anyone know if it is possible to split a library in half, when backing up? I have an external 1000 gig lacie drive that is the home of my itunes media folder location. I also have two smaller lacie drives that put together could have enough space to cover the amount of music that is on the large lacie.
The total size of the library is now 397 gigs, and since I've been reimporting many favorite albums in the full aiff form, the library is growing. But since the library is too big now for any one backup drive I'm getting nervous. The smaller drives are 250 and 175 gig drives, and up until now have been the place where I would double backup to, when the library was much smaller,[ only aac files ].
So how do I send part of the library to one drive and the rest to another???

Thanks J.G. ... I checked out all these fixes, and none address my issue. I am not looking to change the location of the library to be able to play specific genres, or different kinds of files [movies] on different drives. I am happy that all my files are stored and played from one place.
I am only [ and, perhaps it is a too big only..] looking for a way to portion out the library [ one portion that would fill the smaller drive and the other portion that would correspond with the size of the other external drive] to utilize the drives that I already own, as a place of backup. I know that the easiest way to fix the problem would be to buy another large drive similar in size to the main one I am now using to store my music.
Even perhaps one that has double the size and, an automatic mirroring function, like the western digital two terrabite model.
But, failing that option, I am still looking for a cheaper work around!

How to play large music Library in shuffle play on iPad

I collect music and have a large library, very large, I have to constantly look for tracks to delete when I sync my two 160GB iPod classics, which hold around 18,350 songs currently. Using iTunes match on 64GB iPad and 32GB iPhone, which are at 20,628 songs and 20,572 songs respectively, including most of the deleted tracks which are still on iTunes match, although I'm not sure why the numbers are different. At least three fourths of the tracks are iTunes downloads, the majority of the rest are from my CD and vinyl library and can't be found at iTunes. Because of the size of the library, I do look for songs to delete from the library whenever I synch new music mad as you might have guessed, I buy a lot of music - all the charted Billboard records and emphasis album tracks, and then some, such as 12 inch mixes and various variations and have most of the records listed in the various Joel Whitburn Billboard reference books for Pop, R&B, Country, Dance, Rock, and basically all the formats and genres that compose the bulk of the tracks on the Hot 100.
What I would like to do is use the iPad in the same fashion as the iPods, which is usually shuffle play. It does work, but a lot of songs seem to me greyed out, basically anything that isn't an iTunes purchase is checked to be marked directly to the iPads storage, and the rest is in iTunes match. If I rent the 50GB available at iCloud, and I really probably need two such accounts, can I get tracks to play in shuffle play automatically from the cloud, along with my locally synced tracks, or does each have to be downloaded individually, which would defeat the whole purpose of shuffle play? Also, for some reason, when these tracks are played in shuffle there are very few tracks greyed out, and it does what I want, while with the wireless data plan many more tracks are greyed out. Also, does the system automatically choose different tracks to be greyed out each time i connect to wireless, or is the same every time? I really need a 512GB iPad, or at the absolute minimum a 256GB one.
Any thoughts or ideas? Thanks.

Did you select them to sync to your iphone?
Did you sync your iphone?
What did you try?
http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/iphone_user_guide.pdf

I'm in the process of switching computers. Is it necessary for me to back up my itunes music library somehow, or will my library come up when I install itunes on my new computer?

I'm in the process of switching computers. Is it necessary for me to back my itunes music, or will my library come up when I install itunes on my new computer?

Hello,
I would recommend taking a look at the article below for more information about migrating your iTunes library.
iTunes for Windows: Moving your iTunes Media folder
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1364
-Griff W.

How do I fill a 40GB iPod with random subset of a larger music library?

I have more songs than will fit on my 40GB ipod. I would like to have a random subset of my library uploaded to fill my ipod. And then next time, I want to replace all the songs on my ipod with another random subset of my library. I believe there is a way to do this with smaller ipods. Can I do this with my 40GB model?
Thanks.

You can have Itunes make a smart playlist that randomly selects about 32 GB worth of music onto a playlist, and make that playlist automatically update to your Ipod.
I would then add to the playlist a rule that says if the song has been played within the last 4 months say, it gets kicked out of the playlist.

Managing / Backing Up a Large Music Library

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for